A Childhood Lost
by Skysalla
Summary: As a mission comes to a close, Clint realizes he has a problem with the repercussions of the final objective. Missionfic. Early Partnership. Pre Clintasha


So I started this back for the Be_Compromised Promptathon this summer and then all the sudden out of nowhere I had to move twice as fast as I planned and then I got a new job and then I just was generally dealing with real life and not even thinking about this.

After all that time I wasn't even sure if I should post it, but Jess did some lovely beta work and in my opinion the world needs more Clintasha.

It's obviously much too late for the promptathon, but here it is anyways.

PROMPT:

For an undercover mission they adopt a kid from an orphanary. At the end of the mission, their 'characters' will have an accident and vanish, while the kid gets sent back to another foster home. Natasha is indifferent to this fact while Clint didn't think of it until near the end of their mission. He is angry and hurt and doesn't want to have the kid go through that but they can't keep the kid either.

Bonus points if Natasha is angry at Clint's unproffessionalism at first but then he makes her see it his way.

More bonus points if Clint is deaf.

* * *

><p>"Okay, honey, the coast is clear." She ducks back down behind the fence and half squats to turn to her partner. He's still at the side of the minivan, the rear door ajar in front of him. She drops her sweet cover voice and snaps at him. "We gotta move. Grab the kid." But he doesn't move, doesn't even give any indication that he heard her. "Clint," she hisses. "Get him. This is our window."<p>

When he still fails to respond, Natasha growls and makes her way back to the van to find out what's wrong. Never in their year of partnership has he ever frozen like this before. "Clint." Her voice is feral. If he messes this up then there's going to be hell to pay. "What's going on?"

Clint stands with one hand still on the door of the van and his other hand pillowed under his forehead on the roof. His eyes are dark as they stare down at the asleep nine-year-old in the backseat. Since he still hasn't responded, Natasha can't help but wonder if the battery in his hearing aid had finally given out. He had been concerned it was low. With a sigh she stuffs her pistol into the waist of her pants and reaches around Clint to undo the kid's seatbelt.

"No."

She freezes at the murderous tone in his voice and turns to look at him. "What?" Her eyebrows shoot up. "What do you mean, no?"

Clint still hasn't moved, but his eyes finally meet hers. There's pain there, but also a determination she hasn't seen since he brought her in. "I won't."

It's the first time in a long time that Natasha has no words. Clint's eyes go back to the child and his frown returns. Natasha doesn't think, just shoves Clint hard. His arms spiral as he attempts to maintain a balance, but he hadn't been prepared for the force and ends up on his ass.

"No, Natasha. I can't." He shakes his head. "I can't complete this part of the mission."

"What the fuck, Clint?" He cringes at her voice. The gesture is so unusually childlike that it startles Natasha. "This mission is nearly complete." She tries again, softer.

"I can't." Clint says. "Look at him."

She doesn't. "This is our last objective. We get him inside and we disappear."

Clint draws his knees to his chest and Natasha can't stand how it makes him look even more childish than he already looked. "I can't see this kid abandoned."

"Barton," she snaps. "You knew the mission parameters six months ago. You said you'd be fine."

"I know what I said, Nat." He scrubs a hand across his eyes and through his hair. "I know what we discussed. But you can't tell me you're okay with this?"

She sinks down to sit on the running board of the van and is careful not to bump Paul's sleeping foot. "He'll be fine in proper foster care. We've done a thorough background check on the family he's being sent to."

"We're abandoning him."

"Clint," Natasha sighs. "He knew we were only temporary until the threat was eliminated. He knew."

Clint stands, the broken childish emotions fall away as he replaces them with the hard exterior she recognizes from past missions. "I _knew _a lot of things when I was nine too, Natasha." He stalks away before she can respond.

Natasha doesn't bother to go after him. If Clint wants to walk away on this mission then she'll just have to finish without him. They had been on protective detail over Paul for six months since he had been the target of a weapons manufacturer after the murder of his real parents. Natasha had initially baulked at the assignment, but when the manufacturer had turned up at a baseball game it had been lucky the two assassins were in play.

Their little "family" was now supposed to disappear in an accident on their way to visit relatives. While Paul was in the clear safety wise, everyone had agreed it would be safer for all of them to "die" in case someone opened up the case again or a lower operative of the man's organization took on the vendetta. So disappear they would.

Natasha stands and turns back to look at Paul. His head drooped over onto his shoulder and the stuffed dinosaur Clint had won him at the carnival lay cradled tightly in his arms. The tail of the dinosaur covered the seat belt and Natasha will have to lift it in order to undo the buckle.

He wasn't a small kid and Natasha would have much prefered Clint being the one to lift him inside, but she reaches into the car and starts to draw him towards her. Paul stirs at the movement, he doesn't fully wake up and his eyes come half open. "Mom?" He mutters sleepily.

Natasha freezes with her hands still poised behind his back and under his knees. Paul's eyes find hers as he turns his head to snuggle against her arm.

"No, Pasha." The nickname slips from her mouth without thought and Natasha's heart sinks when she realizes what she's said. "Go back to sleep."

Paul nods weakly as she removes her hands out from underneath him and watches as he pulls the plush dinosaur closer to his chest. His eyes drop closed and Natasha holds a breath while she waits for him to settle. When she's sure he's asleep again she slowly closes the side door of the van and locks it. The driver's window is still cracked open from when they'd parked the car and given that it's nighttime she doesn't feel the need to be concerned about heatstroke.

She needs to find Clint. Now. With a deep breath to steel herself, she starts off in the direction he had gone. His path was fairly easy to follow where he had traipsed through the brush to sit on the bank of a creek not more than sixty feet from the parked car. As she approaches she notices his over the ear hearing aids had been removed and she wants to smack him for the foolish move thats left him so exposed. Instead she sinks down beside him with her legs crossed beneath her and sits quietly.

Neither one of them makes a move and there is silence for a long time as they stare across the creek.

"I was nine too." He finally says, his volume shaky and uneven like she knows it to be when he can't hear himself speak. "When I lost my parents."

She doesn't respond, knows he can't hear her even if she did. She does, however, turn to look at him. His gaze is fixed out somewhere in the distance at least a hundred feet beyond where Natasha could ever hope to see.

"I hated him...But family, you know?" She really doesn't know, but it's clear that he doesn't care or he would have put his aids back in. "It felt like being abandoned. And that feeling didn't go away. Not for a long time."

She doesn't actually know much about his history. They hadn't been partnered long enough for her to learn every little detail. She knows he was at least partially raised in the circus, knows he has a brother who left him for dead at some point in his late teens. Now that he brought it up, she could see how there might be a clear pattern of abandonment in his life.

"Barney acted out. Fosters kept sending us back. Orphanage was where we finally stuck. Till we ran away." He closes his eyes, lost in the memories of childhood. Natasha can't remember her own childhood, but as she watches her partner pull his knees back to his chest and rest his chin on them she was pretty sure she didn't mind the lack of memory.

"Then Barney left. Circus left. Everybody left." She dares to touch him now, her hand soft on his shoulder as he takes a deep breath. With her free hand she reaches into his pocket and removes one of his hearing aids. It takes her a minute to position it in the ear closest to her and although she doesn't think it's settled correctly he doesn't bother to fix it.

"I'm not leaving, Clint."

He tilts his head downward until his forehead is on his knees and his face is obscured by his arms. "I can't let him go through all that."

She runs her hand up his back and massages his neck. "We can't keep him. Not unless you want out." It's not a question. They both know what the answer would be anyways.

He shifts his head sideways and one eye barely becomes visible over his arm to look at her. The pain visible on his face and in his eyes is raw and he doesn't even bother to cover it. "I can't be the one to start him on a life of abandonment."

Carefully she moves her hand to cup the side of his head behind his ear and rests her thumb along his jawbone. "You saved his life." Clint nods and turns further into her touch. She has to straighten his hearing aid when his movement bumps the already loose device against her fingers. "But you have to know SHIELD isn't going to walk away from him. They're going to have regular check ins."

Clint is silent as he continues to watch her with his one eye and she finds herself unable to stop her fingers' movement through his hair. They sit like this for a moment before Clint lifts his head to look at her with both eyes. He's hesitant and bites his lip before he speaks. "You think...people like us-"

"No." He furrows his brow at her quick response and she sighs. "We are not in a life that allows the luxury of children, Clint. How many times have you been shot? Stabbed? Tortured? How many times will we come to the edge of death before we finally die? You feel like you're abandoning Paul after only knowing him for six months, what if he was your own flesh and blood?!" Clint's frown deepens and she knows he has pictured the logistics now. "Our life would ruin a child to be brought into it. All we can do is our jobs to make sure other kids don't have to have our lives."

His eyes close and he nods. Even though it's clear he doesn't like it, she knows he won't fight her anymore on the matter. When he opens his eyes again she can see a new resolve there. "Okay. We can't keep him. But he doesn't have to be lost in the system to only be checked up on once in a blue moon either."

She leans back a little startled at this change of direction. "What did you have in mind?"

"Benitez." He stands and fishes his other aid out of his pocket. "Yeah, Benitez."

She clamours to her feet after him and they both start back to the car. "Who is Benitez?"

"An R&D agent who I work with sometimes to design some of my field equipment. She used to be an olympic archer back in the day. Last I talked to her she was having trouble getting pregnant." Clint is already back at the car now and he turns to her with his trademark shit eating grin. "She'll adopt him."

"What?" She stops and he steps towards her and grabs her hands.

"She'll adopt him. Everybody wins. Benitez gets a kid, Paul gets a proper family and he doesn't have to worry about his new parents dying on some mission in bum-fuck nowhere. Plus Benitez and I meet on the regular for equipment upgrades and I can communicate covertly through her to let him know he's not abandoned."

Natasha frowns, but the joy on Clint's face that he's solved the problem is undeniable. As she runs the scenario through her head she can't come up with any flaws. There's no reason not to agree. "Alright."

He hugs her. The contact is sudden and far more real than any of the "play" public displays of affection they'd done on their brief mission as parents. He turns his head towards her ear and whispers solemnly. "Thank you, Natasha."

"_Grandpa_ is going to have a field day with this." She mutters as he releases her and goes to the driver side of the car. She tosses him the keys over the car so he can unlock the door.

Clint grins as he climbs in and reaches across to unlock her door. "Don't worry Mrs. Copenheimer. Grandad won't mind one bit."

She climbs into the van with a snort and pulls the door shut behind her as he starts up the van. Natasha shifts in her seat to look at the still passed out child in the back. A dribble of drool had run down his face and created a string of saliva from his mouth to the top of his stuffed dinosaur. Kids may never have been an option for her, but after these last six months on mission as a mother, she finally understood what it was she had given up.

An unwanted tear builds in her eye as Clint reaches out to cup her face. She turns to meet his gaze.

"Thank you for understanding."


End file.
